2023-12-02 9:43:17 ¶ ●

I like how while Peter is meant to be a parallel to Will, Peter himself isn’t all that… conventional in that, he digs up the grave of his friend, stuffs her throat with the grave dirt, puts a bird in her chest cavity and stuffs her inside a dead horse, so that in this convoluted and absolutely mental way, she can be “reborn” while simultaneously pointing at his social worker as the killer. And it speaks so much of his own struggle with his head injury and the way he is being abused by his social worker, and his own need to be reborn from this horrible situation in which he feels like he is dying at the hands of his social worker. While there is innocence in his desire to see his friend move on from the abuse, and in this case, the pain from being murdered by the same perpetrator, Peter’s mind clearly doesn’t work like everybody else around him. But Will sympathises with him and is kind to him. He understands Peter even though Peter must not understand him the same way. And it’s painful because the person who does understand Will is Hannibal. He hates it but he can’t hate Hannibal, and he despises that he can’t hate Hannibal, while Peter’s abuser is a strict psychopath and it’s easy to hate him. Hannibal can’t be hated. So he pulls the trigger on the social worker, as a cheaper, less complicated and very black and white alternative to Hannibal Lecter. It’s a very painful and well-written story about surviving a horrible, horrible person’s abuse and being a victim, and their frankly unbearable struggle to overcome them. Will appears strong, but to be moved so utterly by Peter’s story, imagine how much Will experienced suffering under Hannibal’s manipulations. It makes me feel helpless.